Home / business / life / social bookmarking / ya-ttitude / I walk through the valley of the shadow of digg
Being the Ya-ttitudeTM blog, the direction I am going to take on all this recent social media and digg-specific nonsense will of course be a positive one. The best way I know to be and stay positive is to give full disclosure and be as transparent as I can. So I will share with you all the knowledge I have gained over the 6-8 months of my digging. Some of what is about to told to you is quite explosive in nature. So stay tuned for some real “interesting” facts and some real good Easter Eggs to boot. So here we start; Our walk through the valley of the shadow of digg. I do know that there were many people who have suffered a 
Digg.com perma-ban. I also know that there are just as many if not more people who have lost good friends that they knew and “social-medialized” with on Digg. There are others who have lost the “urge” to digg and in many more cases there are those who love the site, love to digg but have become so afraid of the recent unexplained bannings that they are simply afraid to play on Digg’s Social Media Bookmarking site because the Fear the Ban Hammer falling on them too, for simply using the system as initially designed. The recent bannings will be thoroughly explained at the bottom of this article in a section titled “The April Fools Day Meltdown; How Digg fooled itself into a Corner!”
I really do not want to or intend to make this a rant about how I got banned from Digg. (Check some of it out here if you are really interested) I used the DiggBoss script. (The Diggboss script allowed the user to see who actually dugg your submissions. It was quite a useful tool. If you spent many hours working on digg - you did want to know if your digging for someone was reciprocated. It also made shouting fantastic - as you were able to “not” shout to people who already dugg a story - making you NOT look like an annoying shouter) I did delete the script as soon as I realized that it was against TOS; but I did get banned for using the script anyway - retroactively. It was explained to me that these scripts leave a “footprint” on digg, and they can go back and see it in their logs.
One of the other complaints I hear a lot is to a “lack of fair warning” and “Second Chances” - And though that might be the way quality and profitable businesses run their operations; always placing the customer ahead of the immediate good of the business; Digg is not a democracy but a Diggocracy. Digg has moderators. There is a group of moderators that check everything that gets hot feverishly working 24/7 (though they seem to slack off tremendously over a weekend). They do not bother with whitelisted domains (there is list of some of the whitelisted domains below in the section titled: “Gaming by using tools/submitting whitelisted Domains,”) but they check every non whitelisted domains, and bury these domains, yes certain domains are even banned. No matter how
many diggs they get the non whitelisted domains are not allowed to front page. Every non whitelisted domain is hand picked and pre-approved by a moderator to hit front page or not. Any positive news about digg is front paged almost immediately; any negative news about digg - and they have a warning - possibly inaccurate reported by diggers. If a good story in not on a whitelisted domain, it may never go Front Page. So, yes, any place where users can write their thoughts is not a whitelisted domain. You might have seen non whitelisted domains staying hot forever but never getting front page status.
I have actually put this theory into action, and anyone who wants to know how I figured this out can drop me a note and I will explain it all. The other thing is that a whitelisted domain can go front page twice with the same URL; Meaning that if two people submit the same story from the same whitelisted site. Both submissions will go to the front page of digg. You can check these two examples out for some proof.
The Five Most Overrated Jobs of All Time
The Five Most Overrated Jobs of All Time
10 People from Your Past that will haunt you o Facebook
10 People from Your Past that will haunt you o Facebook
Cracked.com is a definite whitelisted site; and it seems the same diggers post from cracked.com everyday; fighting to be the first to get there and the first to submit, but I guess you still do pretty good if you are within the first two to try to submit that story. Later on in this post I will show you some of the Gaming “Can’t Misses” and some other great “get to the Front Page of Digg” stuff. Look for a section Titled: “Gaming with Mutual Friends - Importance of Mutual Friends on Digg.”
Digg is privately owned and even thought most would consider the “site users” the actual customers, if they decide to toss a few customers out of their emporium because they feel it is better for their company then c’mon folks - “It’s their party - we are only invited guests, not paying customers;” in their eyes anyway, and we are only there to serve an end to their means.
We were all thinking that Google was the definite end to their means, but that didn’t work out as well as they had hoped. Wait, what am I saying, it did not work at all. You see this moderator-driven blacklisting, whitelisting and burying stories was an issue with Google. One of the reasons why Google did not buy digg was because their system is not totally automated; it was a definite issue with Google. This point never appears on any blog or anywhere but this is the fact - Google rejected digg because digg is not 100% algorithm-driven, human intervention is required which Google did not like. Google already has an automated algorithm in Google News and they expected digg to work in much the same way but user driven, which digg is not and this is what disappointed Google.
What is up for debate here is the “definition” of “paying customer” I mean, there is no fee to join or use digg and the rewards can be great if you put in the TIME and EFFORT into digging. When I was banned, I had 6-months of digging under my belt (two scripted weeks in there towards the end). I had dugg over 10,000 stories, made about 100 submissions. I guess decent numbers but nothing out of the extraordinary. I also had about 200 mutual friends, and another 1000 fans. I was just starting to be one of those “Paying Customers.”
Let’s face it I put most of my free time into digg. I was on before I left for work to my “real job.” I would digg-away early each morning, catching up on my friend’s subs and shouts form the 8 hrs through the night that I had just missed. I could Digg through lunch on my Blackberry or my laptop if I took a lunch break at a Starbucks or Panera Bread; and when I arrived home much, much more. Yes! I was addicted, but damn was it fun. I learned a ton, and not only about social media, but about everything; So many stories on such a vast array of topics and ideas. I think I went into mental overload a few times trying to absorb all of the articles, stories and videos. I laughed all the time and made some great friendships. Not just the on-line acquaintances that we all have but some serious business friends and colleagues. I even met my agent on there. So even though my blog was not really benefiting, I saw the ROI as great anyway. But not for a second should you or the digg-team think that any of us were not “Paying Customers.” I have commented on many a blog that “I have been thrown out of better places than Digg, and it is true. But I knew exactly what I was doing wrong, then; got fair warning like any real paying customer would have and should have and then I may have continued to push the envelope and I was gone (These , of course all happened in my Pre-Ya-ttitudeTM days.)
Ok… That is enough; I said Positive right? So here is a little positive for you. From each and every negative, failure and set back in your life you will find the seed of your next great move. With so much of my time being spent on Digg I was able to come up with a great many ideas, concepts and facts about digg, digging and the digg team. I will now share them all with you - Some will amaze others will astound but all of them are for you to use in your positive pursuits of Digg! Easter Egg Overload!
Mutual Friends play the most important role for us on digg, they digg our stories out of oblivion in the quickest time possible. These diggers almost always make our stories go “HOT” or they at least move our stories to top positions where others can notice, pushing us to the front page.
I agree, diggs from Mutual Friends count less than natural diggs, but by getting our stories noticed to random diggers they give us all important time to gather naturals. Imagine your story with 24 natural diggs in 8 hours at the bottom of nowhere against 102 diggs from friends but “HOT” in category or well placed in upcoming pages in 3 hours. You still have 21 hours to gather all the naturals in the world. This is the reason why shouts work but not all the time. Once your story climbs up the upcoming popular pages they need “popular” or natural diggs, diggs from outside of the group, diggs from people who have never dugg your story on previous occasions, diggs from random users. Title and Description play the most important part here, that’s way words like top 5, top 10, faceplants, EVER, sometimes BAD GRAMMER work but for a limited time. I have recently realized the FAIL, EPIC FAIL and INNUENDO of all kinds are almost instant success.
For my 5100 digg submission I made a typo in the submission. I spelled Burger King incorrectly with a slip of the fingers. It was fine in the title, but my description called the King the Kinf. The story went pop and still gets diggs, but has almost 600 comments last I looked. Most of the early ones because of my typo, but the typo did what it needed to do - it made the story hot!
Recommendation Engine: As you all know a digg from the recommendation engine is worth its value in gold. So what gets your story in the Reco Engine - again it’s the diggs from mutual friends. Faster your mutual friends’ digg your story, the faster is your story displayed in the reco engine to “their” friends who might not be your friends (keep this in mind as it is an important part of the process) and thus further increasing your chances of getting more natural diggs from random users whom you don’t know. In theory this should set in a chain reaction and the story gets displayed to more and more random users.
Moral of the story: You need mutual friends who will digg your story up and make them rise in upcoming popular pages, good eye-catching titles, and descriptions further help to gather natural diggs. Natural diggs or diggs from random unknown diggers will make your story go pop.
Conclusion: The digg algo looks for “diversity in digging activity”. But you can game the diversity to your advantage!
As you know its simple to FP (front page) certain domains which I think are pre-approved or white-listed by Digg. A story from cracked or xkcd is a guaranteed FP. Then again so are stories from arstechnica, msn, nytimes, latimes, livescience, cnn, discovery, nationalgeographic, huffingtonpost, gizmodo, lifehacker, theonion, forbes, usatoday etc etc - if subbed by a power digger will pop more often than not. There are many other domains and can be easily sourced from socialblade.com or di66.net. Check it out - Some of those numbers, member numbers and story numbers boggle the mind!
OK now you know the domains, but how do you know when they update and be the first to submit, I know for sure cracked.com updates between 07:30 AM and 08:30 AM EST daily or weekdays to say the least, and a powerdigger will submit a cracked.com story and fp it everyday. 1 hour time frame, so do you have to keep on refreshing for 1 hour? Wouldn’t it be great if a tool would alert you as soon as the page is updated? Welcome our new hero - C4C aka Check4Change - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3028. You may love this one! No No - YOU WILL LOVE THIS ONE!
I think the tool is very simple to use. Just select the text you want it to monitor for changes - almost always it will be the first title or heading of the story that changes whenever the page updates - right click the selected text and select the interval you wish the tool to check the web-page. For cracked.com I do advice you to set 1 sec.
Now I can tell you that this is not a fool-proof system, but after the amount of time I have spent on Digg - it is about as foolproof as possible. You will knock ‘em dead with this.Now I am going to do just one final note on scripts, bans and the world according to Digg as this post is getting quite long.
The April Fools Day Meltdown;
How Digg fooled itself into a Corner!
OK - I had to ask around about this one, as I was not a member of Digg in April. I actually joined sometime in May, but finding the information was easy and getting the balance was a bit tougher but there for someone one who took the time to investigate. If you need to corroborate, just ask some of the Diggers who was around back on April 1 for the great Digg April Fools Joke.On April 1st they had a joke on their website. Instead of showing “number of diggs” they displayed some mathematical signs, supposed to be a joke. I assume that the script they used to convert the info into the joke info also alerted them to the rampant use of scripts all over digg and by their digg users. In their efforts to correct this problem they decided to change the code on digg essentially disabling the scripts and eliminating the problem. Which they did. But when they changed their code so that the scripts would not work as expected on digg.com these code changes “broke the system.” It made it very difficult for every user to use the system and do normal things, so they had to restore the original code. Which they did. But to save face, they said that these errors on the site were due to the April Fools Joke. Everyone still believes that digg was broken because of an April fool’s joke gone awry, but in fact they wanted to disable scripts.
Now this time, when script usage became all too apparent, they did not want to take the risk and they banned users instead of disabling scripts. This makes perfect sense. They actually did something that they did not want to do, they would rather have disabled the scripts this time around and keep their real base of core users; Those which actually make the site what it is/was; a fantastic place to meet people and gain knowledge and have some fun. But, they took a shortcut. They did the old “bite your nose to spite your face” thing and now they can’t stop the bleeding. The failed miserably the first time and were just so scared they went for heads this time around. It is not a fix for the system. They can talk about that all they want. All of the promised fixes and changes from a year ago have not happened and now with the rapid decline in traffic because of bans, friends of bans, re bans and people who are afraid to digg as they do not want to get banned, digg has no where to go but down.
Of course they can learn from these mistakes, talk to all of the banned, I believe that they may be more open to the idea of a peaceful reintroduction. From talking to so many of the banned, they feel more hurt than vengeful. They would love to call digg another home, though trust would be a difficult thing to gain again. But I know that the only way Digg can get back to what they were, is to sit down and pow-wow with all the Ex-Diggers, the Digg refugees and the Friends of the ex diggers and make amends with everyone! Banned Diggers were using the site for what they thought the site could be used for. Digg failed miserably in communication on this one. It is time to just suck it up and say “We’re Sorry” and “We made a Mistake.” “We will be transparent and work with you not against you to make our a better place for you”, after all - weren’t we the customers who paid the most?
I will continue to add links as you send them to me!
Crackerpat: If I Die before I wake
How Not to Run a Social Community
Dig Let me Down and Let Down thousands of Others
Is Digg Really that Scary - Apparently So!
Yes Sir, May I have Another Digg
Ben
October 12th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Wow. Amazing story. I never liked Digg, anyway. Used it somewhat begrudgingly.
October 12th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Thanks Michael…
I enjoyed Digg. I did not enjoy how it ended. But I can thank digg for a few things. But There are always places like Mixx and Blog Catalog and Reddit.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Very interesting, I knew the top submitters had some secret, but never fully understood it all until know. I am participating in the world wide blogger ban of digg because I just don’t see the point in going through and making another profile. I never did anything against the TOS and basically think my account was deleted for being friends with people that were. Regardless… I think it is stupid that they deleted my account and the only saving grace is that I am in contact with all my friends from digg still over at stumble and BC.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Ya Nicky - Lots to learn - I think therewas some of the guilt by association, but remember TOS can change on the fly and they can ban without reason anyway.
October 13th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Very nice article Benny. I believe you speak on behalf of all of us ex-diggers.
My domain was banned from Digg because somebody reported it as spam. For sure the site is not spam, it is a quality site with good content. ALL the stories I have submitted to Digg were in the TOP HOT UPCOMING (sometimes 1st and 2nd) until someone (the manual digg operators most probably) removed them. The diggs came 20% from my mutual friends and 80% from other diggers. If you have a look at Digg top stories, and as you said, they are only from “white list” domains. Digg does not play a fair game. They should give you warnings in case they notice that your violating their TOC and they should give the opportunity to all sites to reach the front page.
October 13th, 2008 at 4:56 am
I hate Digg… friggin sucks balls. Kevin use to be cool but is pretty much a communist these days. He’s soooooo afraid that more than one side of a story will reach the home page.
He’s OBSESSED with Steve Jobs, who is pretty much another nutcase that is insane about control.
Kevin is also extremely condescending… and apparently thinks everyone is stupid.
Kevin, get a clue and stop going full retard. Stop censoring your crummy little web site.
Luv,
Roger
October 13th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Hi
I am working on a site which try to solve many of the problems with digg.com.
You can find it on http:// — “Not So Fast” - Advertising is not free!
The main problem with digg is the voting system.
When only top voted stories get on the front page it has
to be a subject that many can relate to,
which result in stories with a low information content.
My site solves this by using sharing instead of voting.
Every have a personal news page on which they can subscribe to other users and when those users share stories they will appear on the personal news page.
October 13th, 2008 at 5:35 am
You broke the rules, now go take your milk and cookies and go cry in a corner. And just keep thinking you did nothing wrong.
Here is the person’s digg profile for those of you who are interested
http://digg.com/users/yomamaahobag
nice name…
October 13th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Wow. Now that’s amazing.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Great post Ben. I do have a question perhaps someone can answer. How can Digg be so successful and have so many people complain about it? It’s amazing to me how Digg must be worth millions of dolars thanks to people who submit articles for free. And this is the treatment they got?
October 13th, 2008 at 8:04 am
@Myln - He does own the site - so he can do what he wants - but what he should do is let others know what he wants to do - and let the users decide how they want to use it.
@KIG - Ummm - I am glad you got to speak your piece.
@Mr CryBaby - I adjusted the addy you used so people can see who you are, as you tried to hide behind some profane email addy. You are such a digg expert. Joined 11/2 and have 5 comments and no diggs. But you are an expert… Hmmm
@Mike - Wo - not so amazing. Just what I could digg up in short notice - You may want to hang around for part two - which will allow me some more tme to digg.
@LewP - There are many successful companies many people complain about - Most of the Oil companies come to mind. Difference here - is we do not need to rely on Digg. We should talk Lew about your idea for Halloween.
October 13th, 2008 at 9:01 am
Now it finally makes sense, thankyou for your post!
ciao, Cla
http://techsciencereview.com/computers/internet/righteous-banning-i-think-not/
October 13th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Nice post bugger lugs
October 13th, 2008 at 5:46 pm
@youareabunchofcrybabies
we’re not crying, well that is unless you consider a warcry, a cry which by its name is considered a cry.
i can’t speak for all the banned diggers, but i know that for myself and the close circle of digg friends that i’ve been honored to befriend, that all this sound and fury is a signal of retaliation to come. you can’t crap on the people that made you what you are today. heck i had been digging seriously for 6 months before i got banned, but guys like Benny or Zaibatsu, they put a lot of time into making digg big. Now these same people are going to mass crap on digg.
October 13th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
@ Michael - Thanks for the Kudos - But I was not using Digg for very much longer than you were. If longer at all. I feel bad for you as well as all the others who got caught up in that crazy scenario. Time to put it to bed and move on!
October 13th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
You broke the rules and got banned, stop whining.
Not only that, but you aren’t the fantastic guy you make yourself out to be either.
Do you really think you’re going to get famous for being banned from Digg?
October 13th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Dick of Digg - Interesting to say the least. I was not whining as I told everyone that I used the scripts and I got what Digg believed I deserved, whether fair or not - I got what I deserved for changing the rules to fit my game. You know - Like the Kobayashi Maru. As far as famous is concerned… Let me think for a minute. You read MY post, came to MY blog and post on MY comments section. Guess that means you are trying to be famous by riding on MY coattails? But, if that is what you want - I have no problem helping you out. Drop me a note and I will show you the way!
BTW: Why is it all the people who want their negative comments heard are hiding behind anonymity? I posted from here - You knew who I was - Who I am and I did not hide. I took the piece to Digg - showed it to all of you and got it up on the front page. All of You big-balled 14 year old babies really need to learn how to wipe your own asses and stop hiding behind all that wet toilet paper…
October 14th, 2008 at 9:32 am
[...] up call that the servers were spiking, so I got up to take a look. My blog post along with one of my client’s, received some 4000 hits each at about the same time. The servers were fine, so I checked my [...]
October 14th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Benny,
Wow is all I can say and you said a lot. I never was a fan of Digg as it’s too clicky to me. This story was an eye opener, and I appreciate the time you spent putting your thoughts together!
October 15th, 2008 at 6:41 am
very useful information for a newbie like me.
Thanks for the links in the post.. I specifically liked the Check4Change… I was hunting for something like this for a long time.
October 15th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Hey Benny
Thanks for a great article. I am also an Ex-Digger (twice removed!). I posted part of my own ordeal on my blog, please feel free to index it here if you like it.
http://www.pcdisorder.com/2008/10/banned-permanently.html
See you around
David Miron
October 16th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Digg refugees now that’s a cool group.
Digg to me is useless and not worth the time.
It’s like a casino your going to loose.
All your friends and digg alumni are also
welcome to join
http://dofollow.mixx.com/
There will be another site better then digg soon enough.
There’s tons of great sites coming out right now.
Thanks Benny see you around
October 27th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
After strong criticism from u..Only i know how i”m feeling while writing this comment but you deserve it..!!!
I have become a fan because the way you write and the effort you have shown while writing..!!!
Everyline seems so natural…!!!!
keep up Good work…mate..!!
God bless you!!
p@r@noid..!!
November 6th, 2008 at 2:55 am
Finally I’m Lucky to Join The Elite Team of Deleted Digg account…
My Scariest Dream came true, As digg used to be Mine major Traffic driving force And they deleted my account today…:(
!!